Leading fashion retailer Nordstrom witnessed a 37% jump in digital sales from last year and the shift of its anniversary sale event helped the brand to become the best Wall Street’s earnings per share expectations for the quarter.
Nordstrom said it saw a “strong customer response” to its anniversary sale, which drove “record sell-through rates” and contributed to profitability.
Nordstrom expressed that the earnings for the three months ending on November 2 were pegged at 81 cents per share, up 215 from the same period last year and well ahead of the Street consensus forecast of 64 cents per share.
Nordstrom revenues also awestruck; topping analysts’ estimations even as the overall total fell 2% from last year to $3.672 billion.
Though Nordstrom is not expecting tariffs on China-made imports to have a material effect on its fiscal 2020 earnings, and pushed the lower end of its prior guidance 5 cents higher to a range of $3.30 to $3.50 per share, while adding 10 basis points to its EBIT margin forecast. Net sales are still expected to fall around 2% from last year, the retailer said.
“Our earnings exceeded expectations, demonstrating substantial progress in the delivery of our strategy and strength of our operating discipline,” co-President Erik Nordstrom told investors on a conference call recently.
“Through our customer focus, we drove broad base improvement in top line trend of more than 200 basis points relative to the first half of the year,” Erik added.
Erik concluded, “In particular, the Off-Price business delivered positive sales growth and increased profitability through strong inventory and expense execution,” he added. “We’re encouraged by the momentum in our Full Price and Off-Price businesses as we execute our holiday strategy to establish Nordstrom as a gifting destination for our customers.”
